Human Relationships

In Spring It Is Dawn wasn't on the UK blog tour, but Tanabata gives DEAR EVERYBODY a very nice review, saying that DEAR EVERYBODY is "a touching story of human relationships and how they can go wrong, and a story which made me stop to ponder the long-lasting effects our actions can have on others" -- among other nice things.

The Decline of British Civilization

I'd like to welcome back onto the blogosphere Chris Schuler, the Independent journalist and literary critic, who after a pause of a few months has resumed his wonderful blog, Notes on the Margin, a blog about books. I should point out: a blog about real books.

In one of his latest blog entries, talking about the London Book Fair, he says:

'...Perhaps the prize goes to the Russian author Dmitri Bykov who, in a discussion about the future of the Russian novel, praised that “great seven-volume work” that is "the best realistic novel about the decline of British civilisation – you know it, the one by JK Rowling.” I think he might actually have been serious.'

In the same talk, Bykov said that the best literature is produced during periods of great social and political decline, so I am not quite sure how to interpret his comment either – I just hope he was joking! He's known to have a taste for paradox.

I personally think that Rowling's books are nothing more than the froth of our times, a cultural product rather than a work of any intellectual value. Pope, in his Rape of the Lock famously had the lock-cutting Baron say:

As long as Atalantis shall be read…
So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!

When he wrote those lines almost three hundred years ago, Pope was sure that Atalantis, a bestselling scandalous novel of the time, would be totally forgotten by posterity.

I think that the same will happen to JK Rowling and a great many other celebrated writers of today, and that the Harry Potter series will be one day remembered as the Varney the Vampire of the Twentieth Century.

AG

Two great Russian novelists - Terekhov and Bykov

Over the past few days I had the opportunity to meet and spend some social time with Alma authors Alexander Terekhov and Dmitri Bykov. They are, in different ways, extraordinary writers – ambitious, intellectually serious, stylistically daring. Terekhov's Rat Killer is easily my favourite Alma publication, and a work that I hope to see grow from strength to strength over the next few years after its critically acclaimed launch in UK in June 2008. Bykov is simply an intellectual Juggernaut – a quick, alert, searching, bulldozing mind that has already produced a body of works which many other authors fail to achieve in a lifetime. Terekhov's new novel, eleven years in the making, has just been published in Russia and received many enthusiastic reviews. It is over 900 pages long, so English readers will have to bear with us. The translation of Bykov's monumental ZhD (Living Souls, or possibly Jewhad) on the other hand is well under way, and we hope to be able to offer this 800-page maelstrom of a novel to the British public in the late spring of 2010.

The trouble with Russian writers is that they still appear to be writing under the shadow of their nineteenth-century masters and try to out-Tolstoy and out-Dostoevsky each other all the time. This makes them very hard to export outside Russia. But on the other hand these books could be the classics of the future, so it would be a crime if they were to be lost to an English readership.

In the photo above you can see Dmitri Bykov with Elisabetta and me at our stand during the recent London Book Fair.

And I would like to close today's post by congratulating Ignat Avsey – the translator of the Oneworld Classics edition of Dostoevsky's Humiliated and Insulted – for being shortlisted for the Rossica Prize, and Kyril Zinovieff – who has translated Anna Karenina for us – for receiving a special commendation during the shortlist ceremony.

AG

Unreliable Narrators

There is a really nice interview of DEAR EVERYBODY up at Just William's Luck. William Rycroft asked smart questions about how the book took shape, unreliable narrators, and writing about mental illness -- and I did my best to answer them. Plus, the interview includes a six-word story and a couple of other publishing exclusives.

William also gave DEAR EVERYBODY a nice review, which ends with this: "... the perfect way to tell the story of a man who has fallen through the net ... remembering that he has taken his own life gives a forensic importance to the documents. As you go through the evidence you may find yourself caring more with each page not only about his sad, short life but the continuing narrative of those other voices around him."

This is the last stop on my UK blog tour. Thank you, William (and Kay and Elizabeth and Fiona and Adrian and Marcia and Mike and Susan and Scott and Daniel).

Hell Review on Japan Times

After the review of Paprika last weekend in The Times, here's a link to an excellent review of Tsutsui's Hell.

AG

Connections

At the end of a hectic but stimulating London Book Fair it's time to catch up with work and life. I'll be posting a few retrospective blogs in the next few days, but in the meantime please click here to see a nice article on the Bookseller Daily which talks about me and one of my dearest publishing friends, Natasha Perova of Glas.

AG

Writing Neuroses

There's a nice interview at Writing Neuroses about DEAR EVERYBODY. Kay Sexton asks some really smart questions about structure, the great American novel (and its antithesis), and ghastly characters.

This is stop #9 on my UK blog tour. Thank you, Kay.